(a) This part applies to each person providing emergency medical services within the state. The board shall use all reasonable and lawful means to ensure that necessary emergency medical services are provided to all patients in the state, as required for the public health and safety.
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Terms Used In Tennessee Code 68-140-316

  • Ambulance: means any privately or publicly owned land or air vehicle that is especially designed, constructed or modified and equipped and is intended to be used for and is maintained or operated for transportation upon the streets, highways or airways in this state for persons who are sick, injured, wounded, otherwise incapacitated, helpless, or in need of medical care. See Tennessee Code 68-140-302
  • Ambulance service: means the principal use of any privately or publicly owned ambulance for the transportation of injured or infirm persons. See Tennessee Code 68-140-302
  • Board: means the Tennessee emergency medical services board. See Tennessee Code 68-140-302
  • Director: means the director of the division of emergency medical services of the department. See Tennessee Code 68-140-302
  • Evidence: Information presented in testimony or in documents that is used to persuade the fact finder (judge or jury) to decide the case for one side or the other.
  • Jurisdiction: (1) The legal authority of a court to hear and decide a case. Concurrent jurisdiction exists when two courts have simultaneous responsibility for the same case. (2) The geographic area over which the court has authority to decide cases.
  • License: means an authorization to a person to provide ambulance services. See Tennessee Code 68-140-302
  • Person: means any individual, association, organization or any other business entity, either profit or nonprofit, any state or local governmental entity, and federal agencies to the extent permitted by federal law. See Tennessee Code 68-140-302
  • Service: means the provision of organized response by ambulances or emergency response vehicles, or the provision of emergency care on an organized basis. See Tennessee Code 68-140-302
  • State: means the state of Tennessee. See Tennessee Code 68-140-302
  • Year: means a calendar year, unless otherwise expressed. See Tennessee Code 1-3-105
(b) This part does not apply to the following:

(1) The occasional use of a privately or publicly owned vehicle not ordinarily used in the business of transporting persons who are sick, injured, wounded or otherwise incapacitated or helpless, and/or operating under the Good Samaritan Law, codified in § 63-6-218, in the performance of a lifesaving act;
(2) A vehicle rendering services as an ambulance in case of a major scheduled public event, catastrophe or emergency when ambulances with permits based in the localities of the major scheduled public event, catastrophe or emergency are insufficient to render the services required;
(3) Vehicles owned or operated by rescue squads, as defined by the board by rule and regulation, chartered by the state as corporations not for profit or otherwise existing as nonprofit associations which vehicles are not regularly used to transport sick, injured or otherwise incapacitated or helpless persons, except as a part of rescue operations; or
(4) Any ambulance service licensed in another state that does not regularly transport in this state when called in for transfer upon referral by any physician, health care facility, or ambulance service licensed in this state. A service licensed in another jurisdiction and called by a county or municipality no more than four (4) times in a calendar year for major scheduled public events shall not be deemed to be engaged in regular transportation in this state.
(c) For purposes of this part, a major scheduled public event shall be one for which the anticipated attendance is more than one hundred thousand (100,000) persons, or two-thirds (2/3) of the population of the county in which such public event is held, whichever is greater.
(d) Any emergency medical services agency licensed in another state that is requested to render emergency medical services at a major scheduled public event in Tennessee pursuant to this section and § 68-140-306 shall provide, upon request of the emergency medical services board, evidence that an emergency medical services agency licensed in Tennessee has granted permission for the emergency medical services agency licensed in another state to operate at the event under such Tennessee agency’s license, and has accepted in writing responsibility for verifying the following relative to the emergency medical services agency licensed in another state:

(1) Such agency’s current license;
(2) The current licensure status of all personnel of such agency;
(3) That all ambulances that may be used at such major scheduled public event are currently certified for use in the state in which such agency is licensed; and
(4) That a physician licensed in Tennessee has accepted in writing responsibility for acting as medical director for such agency and that such physician or such physician’s designee, who is also a physician licensed in Tennessee, will participate as medical director for such agency at the major scheduled public event.
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